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Sunday, January 29, 2006

According to the Mail on Sunday, 29 January 2006, British spies are reportedly involved in helping the CIA to take terror suspects to torture centres. There are claims that British spies are working at an army barracks outside Paris, the Alliance Base, which coordinates the extraordinary renditions.

The Washington Post, 3 July 2005, claimed that, according to US and European intelligence sources, a top secret centre in Paris, code-named Alliance Base, was set up by the CIA and French intelligence services in 2002.

Funded largely by the CIA's Counterterrorist Center, Alliance Base analyzes the transnational movement of terrorist suspects and develops operations to catch or spy on them...

Most French officials and other intelligence veterans would talk about the partnership only if their names were withheld because the specifics are classified and the politics are sensitive. John E. McLaughlin, the former acting CIA director who retired recently after a 32-year career, described the relationship between the CIA and its French counterparts as "one of the best in the world. What they are willing to contribute is extraordinarily valuable."The rarely discussed Langley-Paris connection also belies the public portrayal of acrimony between the two countries that erupted over the invasion of Iraq. Within the Bush administration, the discord was amplified by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who has claimed the lead role in the administration's "global war on terrorism" and has sought to give the military more of a part in it.But even as Rumsfeld was criticizing France in early 2003 for not doing its share in fighting terrorism, his U.S. Special Operations Command was finalizing a secret arrangement to put 200 French special forces under U.S. command in Afghanistan. Beginning in July 2003, its commanders have worked side by side there with U.S. commanders and CIA and National Security Agency representatives.

Alliance Base, headed by a French general assigned to France's equivalent of the CIA -- the General Directorate for External Security (DGSE) -- was described by six U.S. and foreign intelligence specialists with involvement in its activities. The base is unique in the world because it is multinational and actually plans operations instead of sharing information among countries, they said. It has case officers from Britain, France, Germany, Canada, Australia and the United States.

Cordelia Fine, a psychologist from Monash University in Australia, looks at questions of self-deception and self-knowledge.

Her premise is that the brain is unreliable.

It seems to know more than “we” know, and shields us from all kinds of troubling but true information.

“Your brain is vainglorious. It deludes you. It is pig-headed,” she writes.

In his review, De Botton writes:

In a chapter called The Vain Brain, we hear that we frequently overlook professional defeats and concentrate instead on our positive achievements. Another chapter, The Emotional Brain, points out that our capacity for rational conduct is constantly undermined by our emotions; we are prey to anger, sexual passion and jealousy, even when these drives run counter to our reasonable plans for ourselves. The Pigheaded Brain focuses on our reluctance to accept new information even when it is patently correct...The Bigoted Brain deals with our tendency to lump together unpleasant traits of which we are ourselves guilty and to project them on to other racial and social categories, sparing our own egos in the process.

These themes are, of course, ancient ones. An exploration of how and why humans are deluded has been a staple of philosophy and literature from the dawn of time. The Socratic injunction to “know oneself” was premised on the idea that a cursory glance into the contents of our minds will rarely offer us an accurate picture of reality. Meanwhile, the charms of a good novel tend to be built on our ability to observe characters running into trouble because they refuse to accept awkward truths about their condition. Jane Austen’s humour is founded on her portrayal of self-deception and vanity.

Friday, January 27, 2006

A top policeman from the Dumfries and Galloway police, an officer who had involvement with the US intelligence agencies after the Lockerbie bomb disaster, is one of 20 foreign officers undergoing a 10 week training course at the FBI National Academy on the United States Marine Corps Base at Quantico, Virginia.

The course involves counter-terrorism.

Retired CIA analysts are involved in doing some of the teaching at Quantico.

"Bomb attacks in France killing 13 people in 1995 were attributed to the anti-government Algerian Armed Islamic Group (GIA). Many think that Algerian army provocateurs were responsible... Many atrocities... were the work of army undercover units."

The WSWS article, of 26 January 2006, is entitled 'France: Judge Bruguière—utilising anti-terrorism as a political instrument' and is written by Antoine Lerougetel.

Lerougetel quotes from Le Monde, December 23:

“At present, 99 persons suspected of Islamic activities are being detained in French prisons.”

Lerougetel suggests the anti-terrorism measures are being used as a means of social and political control and as an instrument of foreign policy.

Lerougetel tells us about Judge Bruguière.

Bruguiere has been at the head of the French anti-terror apparatus since 1986.

France's Minister of the Interior is Nicolas Sarkozy who is Jewish. Sarkozy's anti-terrorist bill, passed on 22 December 2005, gives extra powers to Bruguiere.

The report on the activities of the 14th Section and Judge Bruguière drawn up in 1999 by international jurists for the International Federation of Human Rights (IFHR) and the French League of Human Rights (LHR) reports:

* Judges tend to resort to speculation regarding the suspects’ “moral” approval of the general objectives of a presumed criminal or terrorist activity.* Incidental contacts with prime suspects are considered proof of “participation” (guilt by association).* A suspect’s failure to “cooperate” with the investigators, e.g., by incriminating co-defendants, is regarded as evidence of his or her support for the targeted organisation.* Long, arbitrary pre-trial detention is used as a means of obtaining confessions of questionable value.

According to Lerougetel in WSWS:

The Algerian military coup d’état, supported by the French government, annulled the 1991 Algerian parliamentary elections won by the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS). The army coup was opposed by many people of North African descent in France. Bomb attacks in France killing 13 people in 1995 were attributed to the anti-government Algerian Armed Islamic Group (GIA). Many think that Algerian army provocateurs were responsible. The GIA was heavily infiltrated by the Algerian army and it is known that many atrocities purportedly carried out by it in Algeria were the work of army undercover units. The attacks in France would have been designed to justify a crackdown on FIS sympathisers and other opponents of the military dictatorship.

From 1994 the police made highly publicised raids on the North African community. Mohammed Chalabi, a well-known gang leader from the southern suburbs of Paris, was arrested with 90 others. Sweeps in 1995 and 1996 netted other alleged members of the “Chalabi network.” On August 31, 1998 a mass trial of 138 suspects took place in the Fleury-Mérogis prison gymnasium, converted into a court at the cost of 10 million francs.

The IFHR explains that despite the disadvantageous conditions for defence lawyers, largely deprived of access to prosecution documents, none were found guilty of terrorist acts but 87 were convicted of criminal association—association de malfaiteurs. Of these 87, 39 were given sentences of less than two years and the prime suspects received six- to eight-year sentences—below the 10-year maximum at that time. Fifty-one were found not guilty of criminal association and were released, in some cases after over three years in jail.

In terms of actually apprehending terrorists, the trial was a fiasco. It did, however, contribute to the stigmatisation of Muslim immigrants as possible terrorists, intimidating sections of the population, fuelling racism and increasing the alienation of young North Africans—thereby making some of them a prey for Islamic fundamentalist groups.

Bruguière’s work facilitated French support for the Algerian military government’s attempt to stifle opposition to its regime. Paul Labarigue, in an article on the French Réseau Voltaire site, quotes the minister of the interior, Jean-Louis Debré, saying on September 15, 1995: “The Algerian military security services wanted us to go on a wild goose chase to knock out people who were bothering them.”

An account of the complicity between France and Algeria is given in Françalgérie, crimes et mensonges d’état (France/Algeria, state crimes and lies), written by Jean-Baptiste Rivoire and Louis Aggoun, reviewed in Libération, 12 July 1994.

A spectacular example of Bruguière using his arbitrary powers politically emerged last year. In a pre-recorded TV interview with Nicolas Sarkozy, in which the minister of the interior justified his proposed new anti-terrorist legislation, he referred to arrests being carried out that day—i.e., the day the show was broadcast five days later. Bruguière, as is his wont, had called in the media to cover his arrest of nine terrorist suspects, timed to coincide with the broadcast, in a transparent attempt to boost Sarkozy’s drive towards a police state. The suspects were released without charge soon after.

Islamabad -A prominent official in the Afghan Taleban movement announced yesterday the death of Osama bin Laden, the chief of al-Qa'da organization, stating that binLaden suffered serious complications in the lungs and died a natural and quiet death...

Thursday, January 19, 2006

January 19, 2006 -- With reports of over 200 contacts between convicted GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff and the Bush White House, there is also renewed interest in what "neighbor" Abramoff was referring to in his July 28, 2003 letter, written on Greenberg Traurig LLP stationery, to Gabon's President Omar Bongo concerning a proposed visit to the White House by the oil-rich African dictator.

Abramoff was paid $9 million by Bongo for arranging the visit. Abramoff is no stranger to representing African dictators. His clients have included the late Zaire (Congo) strongman Mobutu Sese Seko and Angola's assassinated rebel leader Jonas Savimbi. Indicted White House aide David Safavian, an Abramoff associate, also represented Bongo.

In his letter to Bongo, Abramoff states:

"I have been cautiously working to obtain a visit for the President . . . to see President Bush, the Congress and policy and opinion makers in the United States. As you know, we were, in advance of the war in Iraq, able to secure a tentative date for this meeting, however, the war cancelled all such scheduled visits, with the exception of the critical US war allies.

Since the time of the war, we have been discussing a rescheduling of the meeting.

Our firm was approached by a neighboring nation which also desired such a meeting, and indeed much more than a meeting. Of course, our firm's main strength is not in just setting up meetings, but in changing and impacting US policy, so to the neighbor, the meeting is important, but merely the tip of the iceberg.

The neighbor has offered to put up the resources which are necessary to not only secure a meeting, but more importantly, to commence a policy effort in Washington which could impact America's Africa policy in limited ways. These resources are substantial and would be used to build a support network for the neighbor which would enable the decision makers to move the neighbor up on the priority list. . . .

I suggested that I visit Gabon after my trip to Scotland in mid August, but that in order for me to preserve this and be able to turn down the neighbor's offer, we had to commence the representation, even in small part, perhaps ten percent . . . . Please bear in mind that the neighbor's proposal was to pay the entire amount up front."

According to informed sources in Washington, the "neighbor" referred to by Abramoff was oil-rich Equatorial Guinea, run by brutal dictator Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo.

In March 2004, South African and Zimbabwean forces foiled a coup attempt by British and South African mercenaries against Obiang. Later, Mark Thatcher, the son of Margaret Thatcher, pleaded guilty to his involvement in the coup in a South African court. Abramoff has close links to friends and associates of Margaret Thatcher, having helped arrange meetings between her and GOP officials.

It was revealed that senior British, Spanish, and American defense and intelligence officials, including Bush administration officials Michael Westphal and Theresa Whelan, were involved in the coup plot. Amid rumors that Washington wanted Obiang out of power, Obiang wanted to make a pitch for friendlier contacts with the Bush administration. Hence, the outreach to Abramoff. But Obiang also had close financial links to the now-defunct Riggs Bank, a bank for which George W. Bush's uncle, Jonathan Bush, served as a senior official over a number of years.

Shortly before the March 2004 coup attempt, Obiang was abruptly told to close his Riggs account during a visit to the bank in Washington and Obiang's Riggs' account manager Simon Kareri was subsequently fired by the bank and his computer and files were seized at his home by FBI agents. It was discovered that Riggs and Obiang were involved in an Obiang-run slush fund called Abayak SA that received and paid out large sums of cash for various "services."

Jonathan Bush ran a New Haven, Connecticut-based Riggs subsidiary called J. Bush & Co., a money management firm that later morphed into Riggs Investment Management Company (RIMCO). Federal investigators discovered that Riggs set up phony and deceptive accounts and dummy corporations in off-shore locations like the Bahamas.

Riggs was caught up in the Russian Mafia money laundering scandal through its stake in a Channel Islands company called Valmet. That scandal involved jailed Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky and the Bank of New York scandal involving key Russian Mafia figures tied to various Abramoff business dealings, including gambling casinos and Internet gambling.

In May 2005, after Khodorkovsky and his partner Platon Lebedev were convicted of tax evasion and fraud by a Russian court and sentenced to nine years in prison, George W. Bush immediately came to the defense of these Russian Mafia kingpins.

A LEAKED memo from the Foreign Office to Downing Street last night revealed uncertainty in Whitehall over the number of so-called "rendition" flights operated secretly by the US through British airspace.

The memo - obtained by the New Statesman magazine - suggests that there may have been more of the flights, involving the transfer of detainees between countries, than the two so far confirmed by Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.

Written in early December, the memo appears to be a primer to help Tony Blair deal with questions about rendition. It warns: "We are urgently examining the files. We cannot say that we have received no such request for the use of UK territory. The papers we have uncovered so far suggest that there could be more than the two cases referred to in the House by the Foreign Secretary."

Shadow foreign secretary William Hague said the memo required "fresh explanations from the Foreign Office".

Concerned MPs from all the main parties have demanded answers from the government about reports that planes operated by the CIA have passed through UK airspace and stopped off at UK airports to refuel on hundreds of occasions in recent years. There have been claims that the flights are transferring terror suspects to US prison camps such as Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and Bagram in Afghanistan, or taking them to other countries where they may face torture.The Scottish National Party yesterday released a dossier detailing ten firms which allegedly operated as CIA "front" companies and a series of flights supposed to have landed at Prestwick, Glasgow and Edinburgh airports.

Meanwhile in another development, a leading human rights group claimed the Bush administration has a deliberate strategy of abusing terror suspects during interrogations.In its annual report on the treatment of prisoners, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said George Bush's reassurances that the United States did not torture suspects were deceptive and rang hollow.

The government is secretly trying to stifle attempts by MPs to find out what it knows about CIA "torture flights" and privately admits that people captured by British forces could have been sent illegally to interrogation centres, the Guardian can reveal. A hidden strategy aimed at suppressing a debate about rendition - the US practice of transporting detainees to secret centres where they are at risk of being tortured - is revealed in a briefing paper sent by the Foreign Office to No 10.

The document shows that the government has been aware of secret interrogation centres, despite ministers' denials. It admits that the government has no idea whether individuals seized by British troops in Iraq or Afghanistan have been sent to the secret centres.

Dated December 7 last year, the document is a note from Irfan Siddiq, of the foreign secretary's private office, to Grace Cassy in Tony Blair's office. It was obtained by the New Statesman magazine, whose latest issue is published today.

It was drawn up in response to a Downing Street request for advice "on substance and handling" of the controversy over CIA rendition flights and allegations of Britain's connivance in the practice.

"We should try to avoid getting drawn on detail", Mr Siddiq writes, "and to try to move the debate on, in as front foot a way we can, underlining all the time the strong anti-terrorist rationale for close cooperation with the US, within our legal obligations."

The document advises the government to rely on a statement by Condoleezza Rice last month when the US secretary of state said America did not transport anyone to a country where it believed they would be tortured and that, "where appropriate", Washington would seek assurances.

The document notes: "We would not want to cast doubt on the principle of such government-to-government assurances, not least given our own attempts to secure these from countries to which we wish to deport their nationals suspected of involvement in terrorism: Algeria etc."The document says that in the most common use of the term - namely, involving real risk of torture - rendition could never be legal. It also says that the US emphasised torture but not "cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment", which binds Britain under the European convention on human rights. British courts have adopted a lower threshold of what constitutes torture than the US has.

The note includes questions and answers on a number of issues. "Would cooperating with a US rendition operation be illegal?", it asks, and gives the response: "Where we have no knowledge of illegality, but allegations are brought to our attention, we ought to make reasonable enquiries". It asks: "How do we know whether those our armed forces have helped to capture in Iraq or Afghanistan have subsequently been sent to interrogation centres?" The reply given is: "Cabinet Office is researching this with MoD [Ministry of Defence]. But we understand the basic answer is that we have no mechanism for establishing this, though we would not ourselves question such detainees while they were in such facilities".

Ministers have persistently taken the line, in answers to MPs' questions, that they were unaware of CIA rendition flights passing through Britain or of secret interrogation centres.On December 7 - the date of the leaked document - Charles Kennedy, then Liberal Democrat leader, asked Mr Blair when he was first made aware of the American rendition flights, and when he approved them. Mr Blair replied: "In respect of airports, I do not know what the right hon gentleman is referring to."

On December 22, asked at his monthly press conference about the US practice of rendition, the prime minister told journalists: "It is not something that I have ever actually come across until this whole thing has blown up, and I don't know anything about it." He said he had never heard of secret interrogation camps in Europe. But Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, recently disclosed that Whitehall inquiries had shown Britain had received rendition requests from the Clinton administration.

In 1998, Mr Straw, then home secretary, agreed to one request, but turned down another because the individual concerned was to be transported to Egypt. He agreed that Mohammed Rashed Daoud al-Owhali, suspected of involvement in the bombing of the US embassy in Nairobi, could be transported to the US for trial via Stansted, according to the briefing paper. Owhali was subsequently given a life sentence.

Shami Chakrabarti, director of the human rights group Liberty, which has demanded an inquiry into allegations of British collusion in rendition flights, said she was "deeply disappointed" by the memo. "The government seems more concerned about spinning than investigating our concerns," she said. She has written to Mr Straw saying the government must now give its full support to the inquiry conducted, at Liberty's behest, by the chief constable of Greater Manchester, Michael Todd.

Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrats' foreign affairs spokesman, said Mr Blair had fully endorsed Ms Rice's statement, yet the prime minister had clear advice that it might have been deliberately worded to allow for cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. "I am submitting an urgent question to the speaker and expect the foreign secretary to come to parliament to explain the government's position," he said. "Evasion can no longer be sustained: there is now overwhelming evidence to support a full public inquiry into rendition."

Andrew Tyrie, Conservative MP for Chichester and chairman of the parliamentary group on rendition, said last night: "All the experts who have looked at Rice's assurances have concluded that they are so carefully worded as to be virtually worthless. Relying on them, as the government appears to be doing, speaks volumes". He said his committee would pursue the issue.

According an informed source within The Carlyle Group business consortium, Col. Ted Westhusing, the Army's top military ethicist and professor at West Point, did not commit suicide in a Baghdad trailer in June 2005 as was widely reported in the mainstream media five months later. At the time of his death, Westhusing was investigating contract violations and human rights abuses by US Investigations Services (USIS), formerly a federal agency, the Office of Federal Investigations (OFI), which operated under the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).

In 1996, OFI, which conducted background investigations for civil service personnel, was privatized. The 700 government employees of OFI became employee-owners as part of USIS. In January 2003, the New York investment firm Welsh, Carson, Anderson, and Stowe, described by a Carlyle insider as a virtual shadow operation for The Carlyle Group, bought USIS for $545 million. With 5000 current and former employees of USIS sharing $500 million, the deal made them wealthy with the stroke of a pen. However, upper management within USIS became much wealthier than the rank-and-file. Insiders report that the twelve top managers at USIS became multimillionaires as a result of their cashing in of their Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs). Many of these instant millionaires already had a close relationship with The Carlyle Group.

Carlyle had been a shareholder in USIS since 1999 and with the buy-out deal via the Welsh, Carson, Anderson, and Stowe deal, Carlyle became the major shareholder.

USIS continues to have a virtual exclusivity deal to perform background security investigations for OPM. The company bills itself as "one of the largest Intelligence and Security Services companies in North America.”

With the Iraq invasion, USIS obtained lucrative Pentagon private security contracts in Iraq. At a 2004 job fair in Falls Church, Virginia, USIS was advertising for "interrogators" and "protection specialists" for "overseas assignments." While he was in Iraq training Iraqi police and overseeing the USIS contract to train police as part of the Pentagon's Civilian Police Assistance Training Team, Westhusing received an anonymous letter that reported USIS's Private Services Division (PSD) was engaged in fraudulent activities in Iraq, including over-billing the government. In addition, the letter reported that USIS security personnel had murdered innocent Iraqis.After demanding answers from USIS, Westhusing reported the problems up the chain of command. After an "investigation," the Army found no evidence of wrongdoing by USIS.

That decision signed Col. Westhusing's death sentence. USIS and Carlyle have powerful allies in the administration, including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the Princeton roommate of Carlyle Chairman Emeritus and former Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci. Former President George H. W. Bush, former Secretary of State James Baker, and former British Prime Minister John Major are Carlyle international advisers. George W. Bush was formerly employed by a Carlyle subsidiary and the Bin Laden business cartel was a one-time investor in the firm.

Westhusing, who, according to friends and colleagues, showed no signs of depression, left a suicide note the Army concluded was in his handwriting. However, Westhusing's family and friends have thrown cold water on the Army's investigation. WMR can report that based on information obtained from Carlyle insiders, Col. Westhusing's death was not caused by suicide. The fact that Westhusing was investigating one of the most politically and financially powerful firms in the world resulted in higher-ups wanting him out of the way. According to the Los Angeles Times, all of the witnesses who claimed Westhusing shot himself were USIS employees. In addition, a USIS manager interfered with the crime scene, including handling Westhusing's service revolver. The USIS manager was not tested for gunpowder residue on his hands.

Westhusing's investigation threatened to unearth a network of fraudsters looting the US Treasury that included the Bush family and some of their closest financial partners. After Westhusing's murder, USIS management sent a vaguely-worded memo to employees about how to respond to derogatory information in the media or rumors about USIS. Management's attention, described as "psychotic" in nature, was on USIS's upcoming IPO (initial public offering), according to a well-placed source.

Dame Pauline Neville-Jones, who last week became a policy adviser to David Cameron, the new leader of the Conservative Party, is set to make around £400,000 from the controversial flotation of defence research group QinetiQ.

The £1.1bn listing of the former Ministry of Defence establishment was approved by the Government last week, with QinetiQ expected to join the market next month.

MPs have attacked the deal because a 34 per cent stake in the company was sold to American venture capitalist Carlyle Group for just £42.4m in 2002. It is expected to make an eight-fold profit, while QinetiQ chairman Sir John Chisholm will pocket £24m.

Dame Pauline, the former chair of the Joint Intelligence Committee and an ex-governor of the BBC, owns a 0.04 per cent stake in the group acquired at the same time as Carlyle bought in. She served as non-executive chairman for four years, retiring last summer, and was paid a salary of £135,000 in 2005-06.

It is not known how much she paid for her stake, but it is unlikely to be more than £60,000. At flotation the holding is expected to be worth at least £440,000 giving her a profit of at least £380,000.

Last week, Mr Cameron hired Dame Pauline to lead a policy review for the Conservative Party on international security, including areas such as policing and immigration.

Dame Pauline was not available for comment and the Tories refused to make a statement about her holding.

The privatisation of QinetiQ has been controversial ever since the MoD split it off from the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency in 2002. Critics contended that Carlyle paid too little for its minority stake.

Lord Moonie, who was defence procurement minister at the time, said he argued for a delay to the sale to see if better value could be found.

However, the Treasury pressurised the MoD, arguing that the £42.4m which Carlyle was going to pay would not be replaced in the MoD budget, leaving a black hole. "This was a persuasive argument for ministers," said a source close to the decision.

The MoD defended the 2002 sell-off, saying: "It was a government decision in 2002 to choose Carlyle Group as a strategic partner in QinetiQ. Since the private-public partnership, the company has continued to grow, its operating profit has nearly doubled, and our armed forces have benefited from the cutting- edge technology support provided by QinetiQ."Dame Pauline Neville-Jones, who last week became a policy adviser to David Cameron, the new leader of the Conservative Party, is set to make around £400,000 from the controversial flotation of defence research group QinetiQ.

The £1.1bn listing of the former Ministry of Defence establishment was approved by the Government last week, with QinetiQ expected to join the market next month.

MPs have attacked the deal because a 34 per cent stake in the company was sold to American venture capitalist Carlyle Group for just £42.4m in 2002. It is expected to make an eight-fold profit, while QinetiQ chairman Sir John Chisholm will pocket £24m.

Dame Pauline, the former chair of the Joint Intelligence Committee and an ex-governor of the BBC, owns a 0.04 per cent stake in the group acquired at the same time as Carlyle bought in. She served as non-executive chairman for four years, retiring last summer, and was paid a salary of £135,000 in 2005-06.

It is not known how much she paid for her stake, but it is unlikely to be more than £60,000. At flotation the holding is expected to be worth at least £440,000 giving her a profit of at least £380,000.

Last week, Mr Cameron hired Dame Pauline to lead a policy review for the Conservative Party on international security, including areas such as policing and immigration.

Dame Pauline was not available for comment and the Tories refused to make a statement about her holding.

The privatisation of QinetiQ has been controversial ever since the MoD split it off from the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency in 2002. Critics contended that Carlyle paid too little for its minority stake.

Lord Moonie, who was defence procurement minister at the time, said he argued for a delay to the sale to see if better value could be found.

However, the Treasury pressurised the MoD, arguing that the £42.4m which Carlyle was going to pay would not be replaced in the MoD budget, leaving a black hole. "This was a persuasive argument for ministers," said a source close to the decision.

The MoD defended the 2002 sell-off, saying: "It was a government decision in 2002 to choose Carlyle Group as a strategic partner in QinetiQ. Since the private-public partnership, the company has continued to grow, its operating profit has nearly doubled, and our armed forces have benefited from the cutting- edge technology support provided by QinetiQ."

Friday, January 13, 2006

January 12, 2006 -- Abramoff scandal could end Netanyahu's and Cheney's plans for Likud takeover in Israel.

Informed sources in Washington report that Vice President Dick Cheney and his advisers David Addington and John Hannah are working behind the scenes to ensure that former Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu succeeds acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. With elections scheduled for March 28, Cheney and his neo-con cabal are hoping that Olmert's Kadima Party -- formed by Ariel Sharon and his more moderate ex-Likud allies -- is defeated in the elections.

According to law enforcement sources, investigators are looking at Abramoff's possible connections to the defunct Oasis Casino in Jericho in the West Bank. The casino, which began operations in 1998, was partly-owned by CAP, a company registered in Liechtenstein in which the Palestinian Authority under Yasir Arafat was a 23 percent shareholder. Another owner was a Vienna, Austria-based casino company, Casinos Austria International, in which Martin Schlaff, a close friend of Sharon, was a major investor. Schlaff's brother, James, is also under investigation. Last week, Israeli police seized computers, cell phones, documents, and a PDA from the home of Schlaff's parents in Israel while he was visiting from Austria. Police also investigated money transfers to Gilad Sharon, Ariel Sharon's son, from South African businessman Cyril Kern and other transfers via BAWAG Bank in Austria. Sharon's other son, Omri, was also financially involved in the Oasis casino.

It is noteworthy that the Israeli Justice Ministry has postponed any indictments until after the March 28 elections. The neo-con media is ignoring Netanyahu's own role as Israel's Finance Minister during the casino scandals, choosing to repaint the radical right-winger as championing "clean government."

As with Indian casinos on reservations drawing huge numbers of gamblers from states where casinos are illegal, the Oasis casino was seen as attracting large numbers of Israelis since casinos are also illegal in Israel.

Although Netanyahu criticized the Oasis casino as providing funding for Palestinian terrorists, investigators are looking at Netanyahu's involvement in helping to steer $140,000 in tribal casino money away from Abramoff's Capitol Athletic Foundation (CAF) charity in Washington, DC to right-wing West Bank settlers in Beitar Illit on the West Bank so they could buy "security equipment" and sniper lessons. Records indicate a flow of money from CAF to Kollel Ohel Tiferet, a virtually unknown group in Israel. Netanyahu, as Finance Minister in Sharon's former Likud government, would have been aware of money transfers from Abramoff to various Israeli interests, including the settlers and casino interests.

What investigators are quickly discovering is a global Abramoff network involving Russian-Israeli criminal syndicates that were involved in laundering money through Sun Cruz casino boats in Florida, casinos on Indian tribal lands in the United States, West Bank of Palestine, the Greek isle of Patroclos (which involved Israeli land developer David Appel and Gilad Sharon), a Sun Cruz casino ship in Saipan, an Internet gambling and lottery venture in Guam, and casinos in the Philippines, Sharm el Sheikh in the Sinai, pachinko slot machines and casinos in Japan, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, Canada, Virgin Islands, South Africa, and Abramoff's hometown of Atlantic City, New Jersey.

The pattern that is emerging is that Abramoff and his criminal associates not only used various casinos around the world to enrich themselves but also used them to launder money into right-wing/neo-con political campaign coffers in the United States, Israel, and other countries. Prominent recipients included Tom DeLay's Political Action Committees and Netanyahu's allies in the settler's movement.

Former Cheney security aide, Leandro Aragoncillo, an ex-Marine who was arrested while working for the FBI in Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, is tied to Michael Ray Aquino and former Philippine President Joseph Estrada. Aquino and Estrada, who were working with Aragoncillo in transmitting classified documents on Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo from Cheney's office to Estrada in order to help in his bid to oust Macapagal-Arroyo from office, are also linked to Abramoff. A return of Estrada to power in Manila would have not only benefit Abramoff's casino deals in the Philippines but would have returned to country to the pro-U.S. camp in Iraq and other military initiatives.

Having failed to unseat Macapagal-Arroyo in the Philippines with the assistance of Abramoff's confederates, Cheney's shadow foreign policy is now directed at assuring a Netanyahu win in Israel.

"That way I have the luxury of being honest. If it's not working, I just tell people it's not working. I don't have this obligation to come up with the goods, which might be a temptation to exaggerate or embroider things. Anyway, I already have a job."

His job is proprietor of a tiny barber shop in Glasgow called The Gentry. And yes, he does charge for his haircuts!

Smith, a seventh son of a seventh son, first became aware of his ‘gift’ as a boy of 10 in Glasgow, when he saw a drunk walking down the street who "just floated up and disappeared". He later found out that the man had died two weeks previously.

He continued to see and speak to dead people throughout his childhood, but ignored this until he was in his 20s and saw a vision of a friend in his bedroom the very moment he died in a fire. Smith claims he awoke to a vision of Brian, the brother of his workmate Christine, standing before him with a calm look on his face. Smith was alarmed - and far more so when he discovered, several hours later, that Brian had just perished in a house fire from which Christine had been lucky to escape unharmed.

Smith refuses to do readings for journalists because he thinks they are stunts. "I can’t be bothered proving it any more. I’ve been tested at Glasgow University and if people don’t believe me I’m not bothered," he said.

His latest book, The Unbelievable Truth, reached number two on the Amazon.com website earlier this month. His first publication, Spirit Messenger, has sold 50,000 copies worldwide in the past year.

"George H.W. Bush travels to Saudi Arabia on behalf of the privately owned Carlyle Group, the 11th largest defense contractor in the U.S. While there he meets privately with the bin Laden family." Source: Wall Street Journal, Sept. 27, 2001.

On 9 11 2001 , 'Frank Carlucci of the Carlyle group was involved in another meeting with representatives of the bin Laden family'.

Terry Macalister, in The Guardian, 28 September 2005, wrote about the UK Ministry of Defence and the Carlyle Group.

Blair is expected to press ahead with the privatisation of QinetiQ, the technology part of the Ministry of Defence...The chairman of QinetiQ is former General Motors and executive Sir John Chisholm.

Independent industry expert Francis Tusa, editor of the London-based newsletter Defence Analysis, said: "I can't imagine the US, Germany or France selling off the crown jewels like this, can you? There is an awful lot of specialist knowledge and it has come from public money - defence contracts."

QinetiQ was launched in July 2001, headed by Sir John Chisholm as chief executive.

In 2002 US private equity firm Carlyle took a 31% holding in QinetiQ for £42m.

Sir John Chisholm could see his initial investment of £129,000 now worth an astonishing £22m.

Carlyle holds its stake in QinetiQ through various special-purpose vehicles registered in Guernsey.

Tuesday, January 10, 2006

January 8, 2006 - According to a report in today's Swiss newspaper Sonntagsblick, Swiss intelligence intercepted a November 10, 2005 fax from Cairo to the Egyptian embassy in London confirming the presence of secret CIA detention centers in Eastern Europe.

The Egyptian fax confirms that 23 Iraqi and Afghan nationals were transferred to the Mihail Kogalniceanu airbase near Constanta, Romania.

The Egyptian fax also confirmed the presence of CIA detention centers in Kosovo, Bulgaria, Ukraine, and Macedonia.

The Swiss signals intelligence intercept confirms WMR's November 11 and 28, 2005 reports about CIA prison facilities in all these locations. Swiss authorities claim they will open an investigation into the leak of the Secret Swiss intelligence report.

Sunday, January 08, 2006

'Whatever happens in the future, there is a new generation coming up that is going to keep progressive politics moving forward. You're not going to get the younger generation, the David Milibands and the Douglas Alexanders and all these guys, going back to late Seventies, early Eighties Labour.'

Milibant is a Blairite and is Jewish. Alexander is a supporter of Gordon Brown.

From The Observer:

Who's who in the Primrose Hill set:

They are the thirty-something set of friends being seen as Labour's answer to the youthful, urbane 'Notting Hill' set around Cameron. They have had their differences - but facing a new threat, they are burying the hatchet.

Their linchpin is David Miliband the 39-year-old Cabinet Minister whose home in London's Primrose Hill is the unofficial meeting place for like minds. Married to American violinist Louise, he headed Blair's policy unit before becoming an MP but has deftly made his peace with the rising clique around Gordon Brown.

Your front-page coverage of Iran's alleged nuclear activities (Report, January 4) suggests that you have not learned the important lessons from Iraq. After recent intelligence failures over WMD, editors should be doubly wary of "leaked intelligence", its timing and the motives of those who provided the information.

Your coverage of a secret services report about Iran's nuclear ambitions contains little new. It is mainly rehashed information available from public sources. It is well known that the Iranians are trying to develop long-range missiles that are potentially capable of carrying nuclear warheads. What the article fails to point out is that they are a long way from achieving this. Dual-use companies are also nothing new. If there was one useful purpose the article could have served, it would have been to name the companies listed in the report.

There are many reasons to be concerned about Iran's nuclear programme, but the UK and EU must also be held to account for the failure of their diplomatic efforts to curb Iran's nuclear development. Your publication of this material helps those who seek to demonise Iran, makes peaceful resolution of the dispute even more difficult, and means that proper scrutiny of the failure of EU and US policy has once again been avoided.

Prof John SlobodaOxford Research Group

~~~

The Guardian is also to be congratulated for quoting the following from the newsisyphus blog:

Wednesday, January 04, 2006Neo-Cons Push More Phoney Intelligence in Effort to Start Another Useless War.

They're doing it again.

Not content with setting up the American people and the entire world via the U.N. Security Council with false intelligence from the CIA about so-called "Weapons of Mass Destruction" in the hands of the legitimate government of Iraq, a country that never attacked us and had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11, the Neo-Cons are now pushing yet another "intelligence report" in what is a laughably transparent attempt to engage us in another needless and pointless war. This time the gun barrels of the chicken-hawks are pointed at (surprise!) another country that just happens to be full of what makes Halliburton happy: oil. And, as usual, the so-called "intelligence" is vague and speaks of "might" and "may" while presenting no clear evidence.

Folks from the UK, and many others, will know of Reg Keys who lost his son in Iraq and subsequently ran against Tony Blair as an independent in Blair's own Labour-strong Sedgefield seat. Recently a letter that was allegedly addressed to Mr. Keys has been making its way around the blogging community, and may shed some light on the Labour government's baffling commitment to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. The letter from one Gordon Logan claims that the U.K.-U.S. 1983 Trident submarine and missile deal and treaty signed by Margaret Thatcher contains a secret clause which states that "the British Prime Minister is required to go to war if he/she gets the order from the President of the United States." Here is the full text of the letter: Source 1Source 2Source 3

Arthur Greenwood was a power in the Labour Party between the wars. In Ramsay MacDonald’s 1929 government he was Minister of Health (a lot more important a job than it is today) and after the 1935 general election, while the MacDonald experience still tormented Labour he was elected Deputy Leader of the party.

But his addiction to alcohol prevented him reaching his potential in the ascent of the greasy pole.

By 1940 he was losing his grip, although in the Coalition government and later in the 1945 Attlee government he was allocated some lesser posts. It was almost as if someone felt sorry for him. He died in 1954.

Then there was Nicholas Scott, who was M.P. for Chelsea before it was combined with Kensington to form the safest Tory seat in the country. In the Thatcher government Scott was Minister of State for Social Security and the Disabled, which sounded like a nice job for a man with a reputation as a kindly toff.

Whatever chances he had of being nominated to stand for the Tories in the new seat (the M.P. for Kensington was obligingly standing down) were blown away when he was found face down in the street after attending a Conservative Party reception.

The Tories who had successfully stomached the Falklands war, the defeat of the miners and the introduction of harsher conditions for benefit claimants, drew the line at their Member advertising his drink problem and Scott was deselected.

In his place the Tories chose Alan Clark, who was not known as kindly but who could be relied on to drink with the best of them without falling over in public.

But Clark was not immune to the effects of alcohol and this, combined with his ready contempt for many of the Members, created a problem for him.

In July 1983, as Parliamentary Secretary of State at the Department of Employment, he had to commend- speak in the Commons in support of – an Order. Instead of studying the speech prepared for him Clark preferred to spend the evening dining and “wine tasting” with a friend and as a result when it was time, later in the evening, for him to speak he was “muzzy . . . I found myself . . . sneering at the more cumbrous and unintelligible passages . . . I gabbled. Sometimes I turned over two pages at once, sometimes three. What did it matter?”

This rambling went on until Clare Short, never one to shrink from putting her foot in it, said that although she had read that it was not permissible for an Honourable Member to accuse another of being drunk in the House she believed Clark was incapable and “It is disrespectful to the House and to the office that he holds that he should come here in this condition”. Clark fumbled to the end of his speech. “This week,” he recorded “I went up a stubby ladder; then down a very long snake.”

George Brown

Probably the most obvious, colourful and instructive example was George Brown, who almost became Labour Party leader and so Prime Minister after the 1964 election.

We can only imagine what sort of government it would have been with such an intrusive alcoholic at its head.

Brown was not one of Labour’s high flying university graduates; he came up the hard way with a father who drove lorries for a living. A spell as a fur salesman may have provided him with a taste for the high life as well as a sharp, manipulative approach to problems, not to mention a liking for a drink. It did not take him long, after being returned as MP for Belper in the 1945 general election, to immerse himself in some back stabbing schemes. He took a leading part in a conspiracy to replace Attlee as Prime Minister with Ernie Bevin but Bevin only approved of conspiracies of which he was the instigator and brutally rejected Brown’s advances.

As the post war generation of Labour leaders died away they were replaced by the likes of Gaitskell, Wilson, Callaghan and Brown. In the leadership election after Gaitskell’s death in 1963 the final contest was between Brown and Wilson and Brown did not take it lightly when Wilson won easily. His bitterness endured, in spite of all Wilson’s efforts to heal the breach so that they could both get on with the serious work of running British capitalism-like disciplining the workers, supporting the American war effort in Vietnam, fostering the prosperity of the ruling class and so on.

Perhaps in the faint hope of placating Brown and of keeping him too busy to organise any more conspiracies, Wilson put him in charge of a new ministry with a brief to stimulate the British economy outside the restraining hands of the Treasury. It was called the Department of Economic Affairs; Wilson had his doubts about the move: “I was taking a risk with George Brown, with his erratic habits. The drink problem was always with us.”

During the first few months of that government Barbara Castle and Dick Crossman recorded thirteen different occasions when Brown was incapably drunk. But Wilson was canny enough to have been aware that he was driving a wedge between Brown and his other big rival James Callaghan, who as Chancellor of the Exchequer could be relied on the fight the Treasury’s corner against the new ministry.

National Plan

With characteristic energy Brown got his ministry up and running and within a couple of months he produced its first offspring – a Declaration of Intent in which the employers and unions made vows about wage demands, restrictive practises and job security. It was, in brief, an agreement to make capitalism behave out of character and so was doomed but Brown was not deterred from producing his next great delusion.

The National Plan emerged in September 1965, with a lot of publicity about long term planning and how a little more effort from everyone (well, at least from those who work for their living) could bring about a controlled economy without any of the slumps and booms which had become so tiresomely regular.The National Plan was supposed to organise an increase in national production of 25 percent over the next six years through an annual growth of 4 percent.

In fact the unrealistic nature of the whole enterprise was quickly exposed when, just before the plan was published, Brown informed the Cabinet that he could foresee a growth of only 1 percent over the coming year.

After the Plan had been consigned to a discredited past it emerged that the idea of 25 percent growth was not based on any real experience but was an assumption followed by scraping around for evidence to support it.

The Plan did not last for six years but for only about ten months.

The crisis of July 1966 when, in Wilson’s words, the government’s economic strategy was “blown off course” was enough to collapse all Brown’s promises. The voluntary assumptions in wage negotiations were replaced by giving statutory force to the decisions of the Prices and Incomes Board. It was, in other words, back to Square One; for a while the Plan gathered dust in a few Whitehall trays while the Treasury savoured its victory.

In a straight swap with Michael Stewart, Brown became an unlikely Foreign Secretary.

Resign

More and more, he developed the reputation of a hopeless drunk. Ray Gunter – one of his admirers – said he started on the whisky at nine o’clock in the morning.

Denis Healey got fed up with “acting as a psychiatric nurse to a patient who was often violent”. When Wilson and a couple of his ministers responded to the latest currency crisis by closing the gold market, which meant asking the Queen to declare a Bank Holiday, Brown offered yet another resignation but perhaps to his surprise – and everyone else’s relief – this time it stuck and he was out of a job.

For a while he sulked; nobody took seriously his declaration that “the left has a new leader”. In the 1970 general election he lost his seat at Belper to Geoffrey Stewart-Smith, a Tory distinguished by an ambition to set up a kind of McCarthyite pursuit of Communists in this country.

Brown tried his luck with the SDP, went to the Lords and ended his days, predictably, with some comfortable directorships in industry.

Alcohol persuades a lot of its dependents that life is not as bad as it is; problems seem a lot more tractable through the bottom of a glass. It also encourages some people to believe that they have abilities which they did not know they possessed – like the drunk who imagines he is Pavarotti, waking you up singing in the street in the small hours. Perhaps that is why alcoholism is seen so often among politicians. But alcoholic delusions are dangerous, not only to the drunks themselves but to others as well. IVAN

~~

Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher were among the British Prime Ministers said to drink rather a lot.

British citizen Haroon Rashid Aswat is being accused by the US government of plotting to set up a terrorist training camp in Oregon.

Human rights lawyer Gareth Peirce said the US government case against Aswat was "nonsense."

"The only witness against him in the United States was threatened that if he didn't plead guilty and cooperate, he would be put under military detention. It shows the extent to which the United States is manipulating evidence and pressuring witnesses," Peirce said.

Jose Padilla, the man referred to as the "dirty bomb suspect" has been transferred from military to civilian custody in Miami.

Padilla, the alleged al Qaida (al-CIAda) supporter, will face charges that he was part of a U.S. cell that recruited fighters for al Qaida.

Padilla will not now be charged with anything to do with dirty bombs.

Padilla, a former Chicago gang member, has been held by the Bush administration without criminal charges since his arrest in late 2001 on suspicion of a plot to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb" inside the United States.

According to a Justice Department document, top al-Qaida officials "wanted Padilla to hit targets in New York City, although Florida and Washington, D.C. were discussed as well."

The charges brought in an indictment in November do not involve those allegations.

Poland's Defense Minister Radek Sikorski, a veteran senior fellow of the neo-con citadel, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), is the new darling of the neo-con media, being hailed as a "visionary" by the New York Sun, a noted neo-con outlet.

Polish intelligence sources report that Sikorski became a U.S. intelligence asset during the Reagan Cold War years.

Sikorski was a Solidarity leader in the 1970s. He was visiting Britain in 1981 when martial law was declared in Poland. In 1984 Sikorski became a British citizen.

Sikorski operated under the cover of a journalist in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan during the mid 1980s and in Angola in the late 1980s where he liaised with pro-U.S. UNITA guerrillas backed by apartheid South Africa and noted GOP activists, including recently convicted Jack Abramoff as well as Karl Rove friend and adviser Grover Norquist.

In 2002, after Angola's government killed UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi with the help of Kellogg, Brown & Root military advisers, Sikorski penned an anti-Savimbi screed in the neo-con Wall Street Journal, dismissing his old friend and the man Ronald Reagan called the "George Washington of Africa" as a pro-Mao closeted Leninist who practiced voodoo and believed in Kwame Nkrumah and Leopold Senghor-style black consciousness ("negritude").

Sikorski is married to U.S. journalist Anne Applebaum, who serves on the editorial board of The Washington Post and dismisses the use of the term "neo-con" as paranoia aimed at discrediting the "themed revolutions" in Eastern Europe and Central Asia and other "pro-democracy" neo-con initiatives like the debacle in Iraq. [For more on the Washington Post, see today's guest column].

While at AEI from 2002 to 2005, Sikorski also served as director of the New Atlantic Initiative, a neo-con contrivance that counts among its adherents Kateryna Chumachenko Yushchenko and her husband, Viktor Yushchenko, the "Orange Revolution" President of Ukraine. Chumachenko served in the Reagan White House and State and Treasury Departments and later worked for KPMG as "Katherine Chumachenko." Chumachenko worked in the White House Public Liaison Office where she conducted outreach to various right-wing and anti-communist exile groups in the United States, including the other bastion of the neo-cons, The Heritage Foundation and Friends of Afghanistan, on whose board Afghan refugee and current Bush pro-consul in Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, sat. Khalilzad, like Chumachenko, worked in the Reagan State Department.

Russian President Vladimir Putin's recent cut-off of natural gas to Ukraine, Poland, and other countries was a clear warning shot about the influence of neo-cons and exiled Israeli-based Russian oligarchs in Eastern Europe and Polish and Ukrainian backing for further U.S. military adventures in the Middle East, including attacks on Iran and Syria.

Tuesday, January 03, 2006

“There is a weird report just a day or two after 9/11 that someone reported to the FBI that three or four of the hijackers were seen gambling on a SunCruz boat,” wrote a source in Miami. “The FBI interviewed everyone who might have seen them, that very day by all reports.”

Sure enough. We found an Associated Press story on Sept 26, 2001 headlined “SunCruz Casinos turns over documents in terrorist probe.”

“SunCruz Casinos has turned over photographs and other documents to FBI investigators after employees said they recognized some of the men suspected in the terrorist attacks as customers.… Names on the passenger list from a Sept. 5 cruise matched those of some of the hijackers... Two or three men linked to the Sept. 11 hijackings may have been customers on a ship that sailed from Madeira Beach on Florida's gulf coast.”

Less than a week before the 9.11 attack, Atta and several other hijackers were aboard one of Abramoff’s casino boats. Posted Jan 2, 2006 07:02 AM PSTCategory: CURRENT EVENTS

Relinked at reader request.

If you type "SunCruz Casinos turns over documents in terrorist probe" into a search engine, you will find multiple cites for the original AP article confirming that 9-11 hijackers were seen aboard Jack Abramoff's casino ship.

These casino ships don't travel anywhere. They arrive back at the same port they depart from. The ships exist only to sail outside US territorial waters where gambling is legal, then back again. Why would the 9-11 hijackers, supposedly fanatical Muslims so religious they would be willing to kill themselves for a holy mission only a week later, be on Abramoff's casino ship?

Sunday, January 01, 2006

According to Kurt Nimmo, http://kurtnimmo.com/?p=172 , "the shakers and movers of the Bushcon administration are former Iran-Contra alumni, well-versed in the methods and means of totalitarianism...

"Lest we forget, Lt. Col. Oliver North funded and orchestrated from the White House basement break-ins and other “dirty tricks” to defeat congressional critics of U.S. policy in Central America and to neutralize grassroots protest.

"Special Prosecutor Walsh found evidence that North and Richard Secord (architect of the 1960s covert actions in Cambodia) used Iran-Contra funds to harass the Christic Institute, a church-funded public interest group specializing in exposing government misconduct.

"North also helped other administration officials at the Federal Emergency Management Administration develop contingency plans for suspending the Constitution, establishing martial law, and holding political dissidents in concentration camps in the event of 'national opposition against a U.S. military invasion abroad.' There were reports of similar activities and preparations in response to the opposition to the Gulf War in 1991."